Official and Traditional Colors of Mississippi

The nine-member Commission to Redesign the Mississippi State Flag reviewed more than 2,000 public submissions before announcing nine finalists on August 14, 2020. The finalists emphasized magnolias, the Mississippi River, and star configurations significant to the Choctaw nation, with color schemes predominantly in red, white, and blue or green and white. On September 2, 2020, the commission voted 8-1 to advance the New Magnolia design — created by Rocky Vaughan with design support from Sue Anna Joe, Kara Giles, and Dominique Pugh, and with the magnolia illustration by Dominique Pugh and the Native American star credited to Micah Whitson — to the November ballot. The commission made slight modifications to the original design before the referendum, including making the text bolder and the red and gold bars thicker. The flag is officially referred to in state law as the 'In God We Trust Flag.'

Mississippi law formally assigns symbolic meanings to each color in the New Magnolia flag. The statute specifies that the blue central panel echoes the American flag and signifies vigilance, justice, and perseverance; the red bars symbolize hardiness and valor; and the gold bars and magnolia stamen represent Mississippi's rich cultural history in the visual and performing arts. The magnolia itself represents the state flower, hospitality, hope, and rebirth. The circle of 20 white stars denotes Mississippi as the 20th state admitted to the Union, while the single large gold star at the top honors Indigenous peoples and symbolizes the five inhabited continents. The flag's design incorporates a diamond pattern significant to the Choctaw nation, one of the Five Civilized Tribes whose homeland centered in Mississippi for centuries before removal in the 1830s, linking directly to the official Mississippi state flower.

The deep blue of the New Magnolia flag's central field was selected with deliberate heraldic meaning. Vigilance, justice, and perseverance are the three virtues the Mississippi legislature assigned to blue in the flag's statutory description, reflecting both classical heraldic tradition — in which blue (azure) has long represented loyalty, truth, and wisdom — and contemporary aspirations for the state's civic identity. The blue field forms the visual anchor of the flag, holding the magnolia blossom, the ring of stars, and the motto 'In God We Trust' in a composition that places Mississippi's natural symbol at its center. The shade of blue specified for the New Magnolia flag approximates Old Glory Blue, the blue of the American flag, connecting Mississippi's state identity to national continuity.

Red appears in the New Magnolia flag as vertical bars on both sides of the central blue panel, framing the design in the color that the legislature designated as representing hardiness and valor. Mississippi's military history is one of the most distinguished in the nation relative to its population; the state has produced more Congressional Medal of Honor recipients per capita than any other state, and its soldiers served with distinction in every American conflict from the Revolutionary War through the post-9/11 era. The 20th Mississippi Infantry regiment's charge at the Battle of Franklin in November 1864, the valor of the Tuskegee Airmen trained partly at bases in Mississippi, and the service of Mississippi National Guard units in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East all inform the red's association with valor in the state's civic imagination.

Gold carries the most layered symbolism in Mississippi's New Magnolia flag. The statute assigns gold the meaning of Mississippi's rich cultural history in the visual and performing arts — a tradition that includes the birthplace of the blues in the Mississippi Delta, the literary legacy of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams, and the visual arts traditions rooted in the Natchez and Choctaw cultures that predate European settlement. Gold also appears in the flag's most distinctive element: the large gold star at the top of the ring of 20 white stars, composed of a pattern of five diamonds significant to the Choctaw nation. This star explicitly honors the Indigenous peoples of Mississippi, a recognition of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Natchez, Biloxi, and other nations whose civilizations shaped the Mississippi landscape for thousands of years before the forced removal of the 1830s.